Please note:
Due to NDA restrictions, the following project details and proprietary content have been modified or omitted. Visuals have been adapted and elements have been generalized to protect client confidentiality while still representing the scope and impact of the work.
Department of Commerce
ROLE
Design Lead
FUNCTION
UX Design
TEAM SIZE
5
TIMELINE
Jan 2023 – Dec 2024 (24 months)
Background:
In an effort to broaden their reach and deliver data to a wider audience, this client launched a data marketplace that aimed at increasing access to its data and highlight its value to the public.
Challenge:
Following the initial launch, users expressed frustration with the data marketplace, citing a disjointed and inconsistent user experience. Additionally, the agency sought to reimagine and modernize its approach to data dissemination. The core challenge was “how might we reimagine the agency’s data dissemination to improve the customer experience while reducing cost?”.
Approach:
To address this challenge, we conducted interviews with 30 internal and external agency stakeholders and customers. These interviews provided deep insights into the pain points, challenges, and opportunities for improving the discovery, usability, and shareability of the agency’s data. We synthesized the research data and developed several artifacts, including a comprehensive report documenting key insights and recommendations, data mindsets map to identify common behaviors and attitudes among customers, and an ecosystem map to understand the relationships and dependencies of various actors and systems involved in delivering the customer experience of the agency’s data.
Data ecosystem I designed in Illustrator to show the relationships and dependencies of various actors and systems involved in delivering the customer experience of the agency’s data.
Sample of my design team and I conducting interviews with end users on prototypes of the product to ensure that our designs exceeded their expectations.
Data mindsets map I designed to showcase the four mindset profiles to help us identity common behaviors and attitudes to inform building a more customer centric product/service.
We then facilitated a vision workshop to align on the product vision and define the Minimum Viable Product (MVP). We generated 20 unique feature concepts to address pain points across various data dissemination services and prioritized these features on a product roadmap. Following the vision workshop, we developed mid and high-fidelity prototypes with accompanying documentation explaining the rationale behind our design decisions of typography, color schemes, and layout. These prototypes were tested with over 60 unique customers throughout the product lifecycle to ensure alignment with customer expectations (especially when leveraging APIs).
Outcomes:
After the relaunch of the site, we documented testimonials and feedback metrics from both technical and non-techincal customers expressing how the new data marketplace was a significant improvement over the older version in terms of design and usability.
It looks awesome. It looks a lot better than the old one...this is more intuitive for a non-developer. This is a huge improvement...
(Reseller)
I really love all the work that the team has done. It is so much more responsive than [---]...this is such a sophisticated app...
(Attorney)
This is a God send. The current layout of how of how to use the APIs is super intuitive...even the tabs to see the responses is fantastic.
(Grad Student)
